6 Landlord Horror Stories: Can You Top These?

I'm pretty sure this was not on their reading list.I know I listed a bunch of advantages for renting over owning a home (and I'm sticking to them!) but the one thing that could completely ruin your renting experience is a bad landlord. One crazy schmuck could make even the most amazing community pool have about as much value as your kids' blow-up version.

After asking some of my friends about their worst landlord experiences, I have to say, I have been downright lucky with mine. Here I was whining about my landlord who took a week to come fix a broken light (I apologize Mr. Maxon ... you're awesome), when these ladies had some seriouslycrazy landlords.

I challenge you to top these six ...

Creepiest Landlord: My last landlord was stalkerish. He would randomly show up and even entered my apartment without giving a 24-hour notice.

Biggest Ick Factor:One time, we had our friends over after we'd all gone to pick up a Christmas tree, and we were standing outside talking when he came out the backdoor (we lived upstairs, he lived downstairs), walked across the lawn, and proceeded to drop trou in the middle of the lawn and start taking a leak.

Most Likely to Become Paparrazzi: One of my landlords hit on my roommate because he thought she looked like Reese Witherspoon. It was hella awkward ... he was an ugly 55-year-old fat man.

Laziest:Shortly after Christmas one year, we had a fire in the ceiling -- started by the fireplace in the apartment above us. An ILLEGAL fireplace. The end result was a big-ass hole in our ceiling for about four months while the landlord got around to fixing it. His excuse was that he couldn't get anyone to come in the middle of winter. Meanwhile, we lived with this horrid hole and pretty much lived with the people upstairs since you could see right up there and there was no noise barrier. And he refused to lower our rent.

Biggest Pain in the Ass: We had a landlord who went away all the time and we could never get in touch. He was skiing in the middle of winter when our pipe burst and filled our place with water, but no one would come and fix it without the homeowner's approval, which we could not get. Also, this same guy told us no dogs, so we moved to another apartment that would let us have our dogs. Later, he lowered the rent for the new tenant and let them have their dogs. I am still bitter. The place was so nice.

Worst Overall:My last landlord charged us for some sneaker drying rack that he said we took when we moved out. We had no idea what he was talking about, but he said he knew it used to be in the apartment because he would come down to dry his shoes when we're weren't home. Mind you, this was the dryer IN our apartment that we paid utility bills to run.